Lost in the Woods with Jenna Wortham
Jenna Wortham is the first guest for our spring workshop series, where we’ll be talking about building a sustainable writing career on April 6 at 8 PM ET / 5 PT. Register here if you haven’t yet! I was intending to post just to make this announcement, but ended up writing this…
Jenna and I first met at the Jack Jones Retreat for Women (and later Non-binary) Writers of Color in the fall of 2017. I was at a crossroads in my career, doing well as a journalist and opinion writer but possessing a strong desire to work on a memoir on my own terms, which was what I came to Jack Jones to do. I have a tendency to be single-minded so I spent a lot of those two weeks mostly interacting with people only at meals, skipping a lot of activities because I didn’t want this concrete plan in my head to get derailed.
But one warm fall day, I ended up too tempted by the changing leaves and the promise of being outside, so I agreed to go on a hike with a number of the other retreat members after lunch. I’d had a couple of conversations with Jenna but didn’t interact with her a lot because she was famous and I didn’t want to be overwhelming (holdover from spending some of my formative years as a child actor). After a while, most of the others decided to go back while Jenna and I, along with our friend Mona Chalabi, ended up deciding to keep going. After twenty more minutes, we realized that we were lost and didn’t have any cell reception.
We kept walking until we reached a barbed-wire fence. Knowing there was a road we could follow back to the retreat center on the other side, we decided to very carefully scale it, and eventually did find ourselves walking on the road back. Though as soon as we got cell reception, we realized that we didn’t need to scale the fence at all, and that we could have gotten back just by walking along it. But the group experience of scaling the fence did bring us closer, as we laughed about our little adventure and Jenna took our walk back as an opportunity to take fun selfies.
Ever since that experience, I often hear Jenna’s voice in my head whenever I find myself too doggedly pursuing a goal, at the expense of taking care of myself. I’ve learned over time that while I tend to retreat to work because it’s often the only thing I feel like I have full control over—product of a tumultuous childhood—it’s actually the willingness to just allow things to happen that often makes me feel happier and more balanced. Becoming friends with another writer I adore and admire who is spontaneous in that way has helped me a lot in terms of feeling more content about myself and my work.
What’s also been wonderful is that as afraid as I was that not working hard enough would compromise my writing, I’ve actually done my most personally satisfying work since that retreat. As trite as the trope of getting lost in the woods is, it took literally getting lost with Jenna and Mona for me to let go of the tight control that I often insist on foisting onto projects, realizing that it’s precisely letting things take their own course that gives writing so much of its life. So maybe if you find yourself in that space of holding on too tight as a writer, it might help to imagine yourself lost in the woods, though hopefully you wouldn’t have to scale a barbed wire fence to get back on track!
<3 M.